On Wednesday, two men were lawfully executed. Both insisted they were innocent. If you’ve been watching the news or following Kim Kardashian’s tweets, you’ve likely heard of one of these men, Troy Davis.
The other death-penalty “victim,” Lawrence Russell Brewer, was until this week the more significant convicted murderer. Brewer was one of the racist goons who infamously tied James Byrd to the back of their truck and dragged him to death in Texas.
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The case became a touchstone in the 2000 presidential race because then–Texas governor George W. Bush had refused to sign a “hate crimes” law. The NAACP ran a reprehensible ad during the presidential election trying to insinuate that Bush somehow shared responsibility for the act.
Regardless, Brewer claimed that he was “innocent” because one of his buddies had cut Byrd’s throat before they dragged his body around. Forensic evidence directly contradicted this.
Brewer’s own statements didn’t help either. Such as, “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. . . . I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”
Brewer, festooned with tattoos depicting KKK symbols and burning crosses, was “not a sympathetic person” in the words of Gloria Rubac of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.
Which is why we didn’t hear much about him this week. Instead, we heard a great deal about Davis. Many people insist Davis was innocent or that there was “too much doubt” about his guilt to proceed with the execution. Many judges and public officials disagreed, including all nine members of the Supreme Court, who briefly stayed the execution Wednesday night, only to let it proceed hours later.
There are many sincere and decent people — on both sides of the ideological spectrum — who are opposed to the death penalty. I consider it an honorable position, even though I disagree with it. I am 100 percent in favor of lawfully executing people who deserve the death penalty and 100 percent opposed to killing people who do not deserve it.
When I say that, many death-penalty opponents angrily respond that I’m missing the point. You can never be certain! Troy Davis proves that!
But he proves no such thing. At best, his case proves that you can’t be certain about Davis. You most certainly can be certain about other murderers. If the horrible happens and we learn that Davis really was not guilty, that will be a heart-wrenching revelation. It will cast a negative light on the death penalty, on the Georgia criminal-justice system, and on America.
But you know what it won’t do? It won’t render Lawrence Russell Brewer one iota less guilty or less deserving of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment are extremely selective about the cases they make into public crusades. Strategically, that’s smart; you don’t want to lead your argument with “unsympathetic persons.” But logically, it’s problematic. There is no transitive property that renders one heinous murderer less deserving of punishment simply because some other person was exonerated of murder.
Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people including 19 children. He admitted it. How does doubt in Troy Davis’s case make McVeigh less deserving of death?
We hear so much about the innocent people who’ve gotten off death row — thank God — because of new DNA techniques. We hear very little about the criminals who’ve had their guilt confirmed by the same techniques (or who’ve declined DNA testing because they know it will remove all doubt). Death-penalty opponents are less eager to debate such cases because they want to delegitimize “the system.”
And to be fair, I think this logic cuts against one of the death penalty’s greatest rationalizations as well: deterrence. I do believe there’s a deterrence effect from the death penalty. But I don’t think that’s anything more than an ancillary benefit of capital punishment. It’s unjust to kill a person simply to send a message to other people who’ve yet to commit a crime. It is just to execute a person who deserves to be executed.
Opponents of the death penalty believe that no one deserves to be executed. Again, it’s an honorable position, but a difficult one to defend politically in a country where the death penalty is popular. So they spend all of their energy cherry-picking cases, gumming up the legal system, and talking about “uncertainty.”
That’s fine. But until they can explain why we shouldn’t have a death penalty when uncertainty isn’t an issue — i.e., why McVeigh and Brewer should live — they’ll never win the real argument.
I don't follow these cases closely, but I haven't heard of any (well, perhaps one) where a death-row convict was found "innocent" via DNA testing. There have instead been cases where some doubt was raised about their guilt. Whether it would be enough to qualify as "reasonable doubt" if I were a juror in the case, I'm unqualified to say.
If you were a juror on such a case you would certainly be qualified, and I already trust you enough to decide fairly. You are repeating propaganda about innocent people being executed, which is an issue that all interested people should research for themselves.
I have read only two pieces on Troy Davis, the first of which was an overwrought column on the "overwhelming evidence," vaguely referenced, that Davis did not do it. The second was Ann Coulter's far more fact-filled column debunking the argument in great and convincing detail.
Accuracy of verdict is only a debate point compared to their fear of killing a McVeigh, a Gacy, a bin Laden or any evil killer. They desperately need to pretend this stuff never happens rather than deal with it. Forgiveness is not their motivation, no matter how much of a show they make of that kind of sentiment. It is much closer to irresponsibility.
"It’s unjust to kill a person simply to send a message to other people who’ve yet to commit a crime. It is just to execute a person who deserves to be executed." This is exactly right, Jonah. Whenever I'm engaged in a death penalty debate, my opponent invariably brings up the "not a deterrent" canard. I have never believed capital punishment was intended to be a deterrent, but as retribution for a crime already committed. That is why I believe it is acceptable to have an automatic appeals process that takes a long time to exhaust itself when a criminal receives the death penalty as a sentence, to make sure that due process was correctly adhered to prior to that sentence being handed down. If our society was concerned with deterrence, the convicted criminal would be immediately taken from the court house and hanged in the public square, a la Judge Roy Bean.
Here's a simple retort for the next time you hear the old "it's not a deterrent" canard......The death penalty is actually a 100% effective deterrent to the person who matters most -- the person being executed.
In general make the argument about a specific case, not about generalities. The deterrent argument shifts the focus from the specific and actual to the theoretical and the general. Keep the focus on the specific and th actual. And also make the arugment about a specific guilty person that you choose, like Timothy McVeigh, not about someone the anti death penalty person chooses.
For the non-liberal opinion on Davis' guilt or innocence, please read Ann Coulter's column on this. He is guilty. Very guilty. Even his buddies identified him as the killer, along with about 30 other eye witnesses.
Jonah, I don't think it counts against deterrent too much; if you are trying to deter murderers, it makes sense on those grounds to make absolutely sure you only kill murderers, as if the execution is not seen as being specifically and ccarefully targeted to the undesired behavior there is less of a cause and effect link.
But yes, it's also not worth it to kill an innocent to deter a murderer.
The person that the murderer kills is innocent, too. If capital punishment deters murderers, and it does when applied justly, then I wonder how many innocent people have to die before opponents change their minds.
I knew Davis was guilty when Al Sharpton became his champion. Mr. Davis made a strategic mistake by not becoming a Marxist philosopher like Abu Jamal Mumia with an ever increasing stable of celebrities supporting his cause; However, Mr. Mumia has the Black Revolutionary Cop Killer niche staked out all to himself and the left knows instinctively that there is only so many of these particular franchises the country can stand.
You can bet that no one, including the Reverends’ Jackson and Sharpton, will be outside the Connecticut State Prison when the two thugs who wiped out the family in the home invasion two years ago get the justice they so richly deserve. It seems that the poor, revolutionary minority underclass attacking police officers working second jobs to make ends meet has a leftist thug chic that brutal attacks on people of class and substance-mirror images of the limousine liberals themselves- do not have.
That is probably why Charles Manson has no defenders…..
Samuel Johnson decried the wealthy moral busy bodies that tore down the gallows on Tyburn Hill thus denying justice to the class who was most likely to suffer the perdition of the violent criminals in their midst, the poor themselves. The wealthy in America for the most part are insulated from violent crime unless they put themselves in situations that poorer and thus more cautious folk avoid. They do not compete with immigrants for the shrinking number of available jobs, nor do they suffer the vicissitudes of life that their countrymen living further down the income scale do. They are kings unto themselves and thus want to be kings over all others. That is why they can defend murder, champion murders and, Chris Matthews like, castigate the lumpen proles who cheer Governor Parry and the state of Texas for the dispatch of the criminals in their midst.
"You can bet that no one, including the Reverends’ Jackson and Sharpton, will be outside the Connecticut State Prison when the two thugs who wiped out the family in the home invasion two years ago get the justice they so richly deserve."
Sadly, by the time this happens, Jesse and Al will be munching Geritol in the Boca Raton Race Hustlers Retirement Villa. I'd wager these executions won't take place for 25 years.
I used to be an ardent supporter of capital punishment, but have since changed my mind. In my view, either all life is valuable or none of it is. How does one say that killing for sport is wrong, but killing for justice is not? Motivation is irrelevant. Someone who runs down a pedestrian because they are drunk are just as guilty as someone who runs down one because they are angry. Once you decide that life is only valuable up to a certain point, where that point no longer matters. Right now, in our culture, that point is murder, but it could easily change to something else. How hard would it be for a president to argue that, as his policies are what's best for America, those who fight them are killing the country and therefore do not deserve to live. Everyone is always comfortable believing that such things are simply not possible here. But I caution you to remember that not even a century ago, our government was rounding up "citizens of the wrong type" and sterilizing them because they thought their children would prove harmful to the state. This idea was what inspired a few German rascals to start a little ethnic cleansing project of their own. My only point, long-winded as it proved to be, is that once you have that little point where certain lives are no longer valuable, you may only be one generation away from full-scale slaughter. All you need is to adjust that point.
First, I am really surprised that you are not opposed to the death penalty, Jonah. I think I must have misread some earlier statement on the subject that gave me the opposite impression.
I agree with most of what you say here, especially that the primary reason for the death penalty is that we should execute the persons who deserve execution.
I disagree, however, that to oppose the death penalty is an honorable position. I do not believe it is honorable to deny true justice for the families and loved ones of murder victims, and other heinous crimes that qualify for the death penalty.
Most people who oppose the death penalty cannot discern the acute differences between murder and execution. In fact, the language they choose to describe executions purposely blur the lines between murder and the execution of a convicted murderer following all the due process of our our land, including trial by jury and exhaustive appeals.
And frankly, I am tired of the overwhelming media preaching against the majority of Americans who believe in capital punishment and the shaming that is done to try to make us think we are barbarians for supporting this just form of ultimate punishment for the ultimate crimes committed among us.
I have mixed feelings on the death penalty. I think I'm for it on theoretical grounds and against it on practical grounds. As practiced in the modern US, I think it is so expensive and takes so long that it isn't a practical deterrent or source of effective just retribution. It seems no matter how heinous the crime, the odds of a death sentence being carried out at all are very low and being carried out within a decade of the crime are effectively 0.
If I were to be wrongfully convicted of a capital crime, I believe I'd prefer the death penalty as I think the odds of having the truth found would be exponentially higher than if I was just in prison for life. And as a wimpy white guy, I don't think I'd probably survive nearly 20 years in prison.
PS: while I'm comfortable condemning someone to death for a heinous crime, I'm not ok with sentencing someone to 5 years of beatings and rape for stealing a car.
"Opponents of the death penalty believe that no one deserves to be executed."
Not true. Some may believe that, but not all.
Human life is sacred, and we have no right to take that life, even if a man deserves to have it taken. In some areas of the world, the death penalty may be the ONLY safe and reasonable way to keep a dangerous criminal from harming the public, but that's not the case here in the U.S. A life sentence will suffice.
Furthermore, as a Christian, I'd rather give a guilty man a lifetime worth of chances to repent than send him straight to Hell.
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